For some francophone students in Saint John, N.B., the school day’s toughest challenge isn’t in the classroom — it’s in the commute.
The officially bilingual province maintains two separate school bus systems: anglophone and francophone, but a shortage of French-speaking drivers has left students wondering each day if their school bus will even arrive.
“I like my French school and I want to keep going there but I can’t trust I can get there and back,” said nine-year-old Julien Brooks, a Grade 4 student at Centre scolaire Samuel-de-Champlain.
His mother, Chantale Brooks, says the uncertainty has upended her family’s schedule.
“The school will call us to come pick them up,” she said. “We don’t all have the privilege of dropping everything to go pick up our child in the middle of the day.”
She suggests a temporary solution could be the recruitment of anglophone drivers — or even bus sharing with the anglophone district.
In 2022, the provincial government at the time requested two legal opinions on instituting a privately-run bilingual school bus system.
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One of those opinions said school buses, while not a place of instruction, are considered an extension of the school system and are therefore likely covered by Section 23 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which guarantees that anglophones and francophones can receive instruction in their language.
“I’m not expecting bus drivers to educate my child in French,” said Brooks.
“To suggest that we have students in Saint John who only speak French, I doubt that’s the case,” Brooks responded when asked about the possibility of francophone students not understanding English-speaking bus drivers.
“We have many families here who don’t speak English or French.”
She adds that there have been instances where parents are informed around 5 a.m. that there won’t be a bus available that day. She says the school district, District scolaire francophone Sud, has advised them that they can choose not to send their child to school that day.
Fellow parent, Sarah Basha, says the experience is affecting the children’s education.
“In the first 16 days of school, we have experienced either delayed buses, cancelled buses or buses just not showing up at all,” said Basha.
“That equates to about 25 per cent of the school year, making it very difficult for children to focus and stay engaged in the classroom.”
Basha adds that the students’ constitutional rights to a francophone education are being compromised because they can’t count on reliable transportation.
Centre scolaire Samuel-de-Champlain is the only francophone school in the city, and is already over capacity and looking to expand.
Basha points out that the priority should be ensuring existing students get quality support.
“Until you have sufficient teachers and bus drivers, it’s difficult to build a new facility. Let’s concentrate first on the children we have and get them to school safely and on time,” she said.
With 15 bus routes still without assigned drivers — most of them in Moncton and Dieppe — the school district says it’s now working with the Department of Education on an action plan to speed up recruitment.
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